LOS ANGELES (CNS) — A former United States Postal Service clerk from Inglewood who plucked unemployment benefits debit cards from the returned mail pile where he worked and used them to buy tens of thousands of dollars' worth of money orders was sentenced Thursday to probation and home detention.
Armand C. Legardy, 33, took and used debit cards that the California Employment Development Department had issued to others for unemployment insurance benefits — cards that were obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic by unidentified people using stolen identities and false information and were undeliverable.
Legardy, who worked in the La Tijera Post Office on Crenshaw Boulevard in South Los Angeles, was ordered to pay restitution of $160,879 and serve a three-year term of probation that includes a year of house arrest, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The defendant pleaded guilty last year to one federal count of use of unauthorized access devices. He acknowledged that from August 2020 to February 2021, he illegally used nine EDD cards that were not his own.
Legardy's attorney wrote in court papers that the defendant fell into a state of depression during the pandemic due to long working hours and the feeling that then-President Donald Trump and the public "hated" postal workers due to "unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting resulted in widespread voter fraud."
According to defense attorney Meghan Blanco, her client and other mail clerks "saw that EDD checks were being returned as undelivered. Mr. Legardy understood that the checks were likely fraudulent and that they were returned after being delivered to fake or nonexistent addresses. Regrettably, he and others took a number of these checks from the returned mail pile, and as the government described in its papers, had others cash the checks for them."
In a separate case, Christian J. James, 32, also a former USPS employee, pleaded guilty to the same charge, and admitted to using at least eight EDD debit cards in other people's names, causing a loss of more than $142,000.
James, who worked in the Culver City Main Post Office, was sentenced last year to probation and ordered to pay restitution of $142,652.
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